Sham Stakes G3

[raybo]

The 2nd Derby points race of the year is the Sham Stakes at Santa Anita. Here's what I posted on my forum today, not much analysis as I feel it would be of little value to the actual outcome of this race.

Today is the Sham Stakes G3 at Santa Anita, going 1 mile on the dirt. This is the 2nd Derby prep this year.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what will happen in this race. We have 3 horses (3 Rockinatten, 5 Rock Shandy, and 6 PapaCoolPapaCool) who have either not run any routes, or have not run routes on the dirt. We don't know how these 3 horses will affect the running of the race. 3 Rockinatten is an E/P6 horse and could certainly be a force in the early running, having run 2 sprint races where he was never more than a length back of the leader, so he could run up front today also. And, his pace figures are the best in the field. 6 PapaCoolPapaCool has run 4 races at a mile on the turf. He wired the field in one of those and was never more than 2.5 lengths back of the leader in the other 3. He is somewhere between an E and a P horse, depending on how you designate running styles, so at the least he "wants" to be towards the front, however his pace figures say he can't run fast enough to do that. 5 Rock Shandy has a similar story, he "wants" to be up front, but his pace figures say he can't run nearly well enough to do that.

That being said, I have qualified velocities on the rest of the field. I'm not going to analyze these horses, because I simply think that any analysis will turn out to be inaccurate, at best. I really can't even use "Class" very well in this race, because none of them seems to have much, none has won a stakes race yet, although 7 Calculator has two 2nd place finishes in 2 G1 races, so obviously he is the "Class" of the race. But, he's been laid off for 105 days and his trainer does not excel at bringing horses back from a layoff to win or finish in the money. And, he will more than likely be a low priced favorite. That's 2 strikes against betting him, even though he, indeed, might win the race.

So, I'm just going to look at the fractional velocities and let it go at that. I looked at the low velocities, high velocities, and average velocities of these horses, and have ranked them as best I can.

Here are the horses ranked by that velocities study (I just basically tried to put some kind of "master order" on these horses' rankings in those 3 velocities categories:

# Name (running style, morning line odds)

8 Hero Ten All (P0, 4/1)
2 Pioneerof The West (E1, 12/1)
1 St Joe Bay (E4, 8/1)
7 Calculator (S0, 1.6/1)

Good luck!!

[turninforhome10]

Just an angle based on pedigree an last performance. The Rockinatten enjoys a doubles of both Kris S and looked like he will stretch out nicely. He was cheap at sale but could move forward over a surface a little more kind to his stride. I like this horse to be tough today.